


the good that won't come out

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon, F/M, at least until the next episode airs..., spoilers for 2x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 19:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12372180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: “You okay?” he asks. “Was it too fast?”She knows he means the ride here, from the hospital to Pop’s, but she also knows that he’s Jughead, that every word out of his mouth comes layered with at least five possible interpretations. She thinks of his mouth on her neck, how she would’ve had to stop him even if the Serpents hadn’t shown up, lest he leave a mark behind. (Vague statements to her mother were one thing; physical evidence for the whole world to see was another.)“I’m okay,” she says. “I can keep up.”(Spoilers for 2x01, "A Kiss Before Dying.")





	the good that won't come out

_it’s such a big mistake, lying here in your warm embrace._

****

Jughead talks in his sleep.

Betty won’t learn this until December, when they spend the night together for the first time. She’ll lie awake in the dark and listen while he murmurs, straining to make words out of the sounds, his arm slung heavy over her hip, the mark of his mouth slowly fading from her skin.

She will know that she loves him, and that he loves her, and she’ll tell herself that love is all that really matters. _All you need is love_ , that’s how the song goes. _Love is all you need._

(Archie had played that for her once, back when he’d only known a handful of chords, when she’d watched him with stars in her eyes but all he could see was the sun.)

But a part of her will think, _you didn’t know this about him._

A part of her will wonder, _what else don’t you know?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

The motorcycle, he says, is his father’s.

“I’m kind of surprised it even ran,” Jughead mutters, nudging a tire with the toe of his boot. “It’s been sitting under a tarp for months.”

“Your dad doesn’t ride it?”

He shrugs. “Not much. He likes the truck better, I guess.”

Betty frowns, though she has no particular reason to – frowning is just what she feels like doing today, with her best friend’s dad in the hospital, and her boyfriend teetering on the edge of full-fledged gang membership – and blows on her hands. She didn’t grab a pair of gloves on the way out the door this morning, and her fingers are cold after the ride over. Jughead sees, and he moves closer and presses her hands between his for warmth, his thumb rubbing lightly over her skin.

“You okay?” he asks. “Was it too fast?”

She knows he means the ride here, from the hospital to Pop’s, but she also knows that he’s Jughead, that every word out of his mouth comes layered with at least five possible interpretations. She thinks of his mouth on her neck, how she would’ve had to stop him even if the Serpents hadn’t shown up, lest he leave a mark behind. (Vague statements to her mother were one thing; physical evidence for the whole world to see was another.)

“I’m okay,” she says. “I can keep up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her parents have already retired to their room when she gets home that night, but Polly is awake, watching tv with the volume turned down low. Betty sits beside her on the sofa and rests her head on her sister’s shoulder, fatigue crashing over her like a wave.

Polly strokes Betty’s hair, and Betty thinks – not for the first time – that she’ll be a good mom to these little red-headed babies that she’s been growing; she’s got the instincts.

“Mom said Mr. Andrews is gonna be okay,” Polly says softly.

Betty nods. “Yeah. I didn’t see him, but Archie seemed so relieved.”

She looks up at her sister’s face, so much rounder than she’s used to. “Pol.”

“Mm?”

She isn’t sure how to express the question she needs to ask. “When you got together with Jason…did you feel like…” She stops, starts over. “Did it matter to you that he was a Blossom?”

“No,” Polly says. Betty waits for her to say more, but nothing comes.

“So you didn’t care that you were about to get wrapped up in this…crazy family?” She isn’t sure why she’s pushing this, or what, exactly, it is that she wants. As far as she knows, Polly hadn’t even thought as far ahead as to use condoms.

“What is your point, Betty?” Polly asks sharply, pulling her arm away from Betty’s shoulder. “We _come_ from a crazy family. I didn’t know they were trafficking heroin.”

“Okay,” Betty says, “sorry.”

She could tell her about everything: the jacket, the motorcycle, the almost-sex, the sickening sensation that Jughead – and by association, Betty – is slow-motion slipping into something he doesn’t actually understand.

But next to pregnancy, drugs, murder – none of it sounds that bad. And Betty already knows what answer she will get from Polly. Polly, whose answer to getting pregnant wasn’t adoption, or abortion, or even just simply living out her life like a better-funded version of _Teen Mom_. Polly, who dreamt of running away through the woods, and starting over completely.

Polly would tell her: _you’ll do anything, if it’s love._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archie is absent from school on Monday. Betty eats lunch with Kevin and Veronica, and texts Jughead under the table. He sends her a string of emojis that she interprets as his less-than-enthusiastic feelings about the quality of the cafeteria food at Southside High, and she can’t hold back her snort in response.

“Stop being gross with your boyfriend and talk to us,” Kevin complains, plucking a limp french fry from Betty’s tray.

“Sorry,” Betty flushes, placing her phone face-down on the table. It buzzes again, but she forces herself to keep her eyes on her friends, her hands pinned down beneath her thighs.

“How’d you like riding his hog?” Veronica teases.

“She didn’t, remember, they got interrupted by the Serpents,” Kevin says.

“Shut up,” Betty laughs. “It was…kind of fun? But also kind of scary. I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

Kevin sighs. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to someone who’s dating Jughead Jones,” he says, “but I’m jealous.”

Cheryl is absent that day, too, so River Vixens practice is cancelled. Betty’s tired, but she tells Jughead to pick her up anyway.

He arrives with the truck, not the motorcycle, and she can’t decide if the funny feeling in her chest is relief or disappointment.

She climbs up into the passenger seat, and Jughead leans over to kiss her before he puts the truck into gear. He looks exhausted, she thinks, the bags under his eyes darker than usual.

“I missed you today,” Betty says, looking at his hand on the gear shift, the blue criss-cross of veins just barely visible under his skin.

She expects him to say something arch and ironic, maybe a quote from an old movie with a bad attempt at a Mid-Atlantic accent.

Instead he says, “I missed you, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trailer, she’s surprised to see, is spotlessly clean, even more so than the night of the Jubilee. “I didn’t know you were such a neat freak, Jug,” she teases, hanging her coat on the hook by the door.

“I’m not,” he says, after a moment’s pause. “But my girlfriend inherited an eagle eye for dust and dirt, so.”

She smiles, and he moves closer, resting his hands on her hips. His fingers slip up under the hem of her shirt, skimming her skin, and she reaches up to link her arms around his neck. Jughead looks at her eyes, her mouth, her eyes again.

There is something he’s not telling her.

“I don’t have to be home until dinner,” Betty says.

She tells herself she doesn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how this will go on the show - seems like Betty's all in? - but I like exploring ambivalence and doubt, and if there was ever a situation ripe for those emotions, this is it, lol.
> 
> the title and the line at the beginning are from a song (of course!) by Rilo Kiley of the same name.


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